Antron99 on HF

Hey Guys. I'm putting up an Antron 99 for 10 ~ 17 meters.as I am on a fixed income and have very limited space.
I had planned on adding the GPK1 radial kit but a fellow ham told me not to waste my money. According to him I should rap my coax 10 turns around a one pound coffee can about 2 feet below the antenna, and that would decouple the coax from radiating.

Now I was always told that doing something like that would create an RF coil which can change the impedance
or the inductance.

Any advice on this matter from our varied and intelligent experts would be greatly appreciated.

Hello Pat
I have not heard of an Antron 99 antenna, but I assume that it is a vertical. To work right, a vertical antenna needs radials connected to the coax shield, or at least a ground rod or some kind of ground. You can save money by using electric fence wire from a farm supply store or what ever old wire you happen to have for the radials. I would also make a choke with the coax, as your friend suggested. At that frequency, you may be able to get by with less than 10 turns.
Can you tell us more about the antenna? Is it ground mounted?
73 Don KE8DO

The Solarcon A99 is a half wave over a quarter wave variable mutual inductance antenna for 10 to 17 meters. It features the Solarcon twin ring Adjust-A-Match system to obtain the optimum SWR. Simply raise the rings to raise the frequency or lower the rings to lower the resonant frequency.

Something that needs to be said about the balun coil vs the radials.
While the balun coil will decouple the feed line in ''the absence" of the radials, the radials helps lower the radiation angle and improve gain, important for DX or low angle performance.
Often advice, while meant to be helpfull, often is not complete enough.
Radial length is longer for 17 m vs 10 or 12 m.
To be fully effective the antenna's tuning should be optimized for the band in use.
Using a tuner does not make up for this.
It only transforms the feedline impedence seen to 50 ohms for the radio to output it's max power that may still not all be radiated as desired.
Good luck.

I'm going to put my 2 cents in here. I also am on disability with very little left at the end of a month. I went to a farm store and bought a roll of their electric fence wire. I think it was a miles worth for cheap! I have used that stuff for a long while making dipoles and also using it for ground radials. The ground radials are all 1/4 wave of the frequency. I got a used Butternut HF9V at our local hamfest and when I put it up I laid down 1/4 wave radials for each band from 6 to 80 meters. All of them were laid on the ground after mowing the grass real short. I have had no problem with the mower vs. wires. The more wires the better the signal up to a point. Are you going to ground mount this? Or put it in the air?
73
Russ Abbey
KG4MAV